Finding a voice for higher education

In Australia, university study is more popular than ever before. More than 700,000 Australians are enrolled in higher education courses, and 2011 applications suggest numbers will continue to grow.

If a test of esteem is the desire to join, universities have never been held in greater standing.

Yet this personal enthusiasm for further education rarely translates into political enthusiasm.

Though many Australians have direct personal connections to universities - as students, graduates and employees - they do not see universities as a political issue.

So when governments save money, by cutting support for higher education, there is little public response. Real cuts to per-student funding began under the Keating government in 1995, persisted through most of the Howard years, and marked the first years of the Rudd government, until the GFC stimulus response saw a welcome increase in support for new research buildings and teaching facilities.

Years of funding decline have seen universities do more with less. Across Australia, staff-student ratios have moved from 15 students to one academic to over 20 to one.

This experience contrasts with the fate of our schools, so often at the centre of public debate. In the same period schools have seen their funding increase more than inflation, and staff-student ratios have fallen.

Attempts by universities and their supporters to improve higher education funding by similar amounts usually fall flat.

When in 2004 the National Tertiary Education Union ran a campaign against some members of parliament in protest against declining university funding, it was met with a swing to the government in those electorates.

In the recent 2010 federal election, higher education proved again not a major issue. Neither major political party released a policy until the last few days of the campaign, and those documents contained little new. There is still no higher education policy on the Australian Greens web site, despite their new role in the Federal Parliament.

This raises an intriguing question: is the sector’s frequent inability to attract political attention a sign of weakness - or an unwelcome effect of success?

Though universities feel themselves under pressure, they have a history of adapting to changed circumstances. Faced with funding cuts, universities have found new income sources by attracting international students. Required to accommodate more Australian students, they have expanded.

Though not all students are happy with their experiences, student satisfaction with teaching has steadily increased over many years despite deteriorating staff:student ratios. The campuses that dot our cities and towns appear large, growing and prosperous.

Surveys suggest that Australians do not perceive any crisis in our higher education institutions. More people express confidence in universities than in the Federal Parliament, major companies, churches or charities. These confidence levels in universities have changed little over 20 years.

In 2008, 70 per cent of Australians thought universities were doing an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ job, compared to less than half who thought the same of public schools.

In the pragmatic Australian political culture, which sees politics as about fixing problems rather than implementing grand visions, perhaps universities do not meet the threshold of a major issue. The problems are not sufficiently dramatic or sudden.

Politicians judge, accurately, the public is not concerned about universities. What happens on campus does not shift votes. Higher education can safely be relegated to minor policies in the last week of an election campaign.

Universities may be victims of their own educational success, but in politics agenda-setting is about persuading others that an issue matters. Problems outside our daily experience are often not self-evident; they must be highlighted and explained.

This is where universities fall short. It is not a case of failing in core educational or research missions, but an inability to make anyone else care. Unlike key interest groups in school education or health, universities have not found a way to be both major clients of government and forceful advocates to politicians. Universities never run the television advertising campaigns favoured by supporters of public schools. Unlike doctors, universities never threaten to withhold supply of important public services if their voices are not heard.

Falling international student numbers may change the politics of higher education. All universities rely on international student fees. The sudden and dramatic decline in this revenue source now underway could trigger financial crises in a way that small, slow cuts over many years did not.

Even then, many Australians may not put together the story. For every dollar an international student spends at an Australian university, she spends another two buying accommodation, food, clothes and entertainment - and all that before family and friends visit. As international student numbers fall, the effects will be felt in reality, retail and tourism. Will those who lose their jobs join the dots?

Occasional news headlines about challenges for universities are not the solution for higher education. A current crisis may have little to do with the problems of five or 10 years from now. We need sustained political clout, not sporadic interventions.

Universities and their supporters must do a better job selling what happens on campus as a political issue. It may not fit the short attention span of political debate, but at stake is the next generation of Australians. It looks a demanding world out there, and our ability to participate will be compromised without access to quality professional training, research to support innovation, and creativity through learning. That will not happen unless the future of our universities becomes part of the wider political debate.

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